Caring for pioneer cemeteries

Homeowners act as stewards for nearby final resting places.

INDIANAPOLIS -- Gary Haskett is a practical man, a man of business (he runs a body shop), and he doesn't give much thought to his final resting place.

He's 65 and smokes and has begun shopping around a little, but he's not the type of guy to be swayed by oak groves or serenity gardens or any other cemetery sales-speak. Haskett focuses on price.

"When I'm gone, I'm gone," he says without sentiment.

But when it comes to the graveyard next door to the three-bedroom Warren Township ranch he shares with his wife, Carol, somehow Haskett feels proprietary.

It's called Brady Cemetery, and it contains the remains of two Bradys, two Baxters, two Silvers and a Swift. Its most recent body, Henry Brady's, was buried in 1887.

"Those people -- I don't really know about them -- but they were your early settlers around here," Haskett said. "There's respect due."

The Hasketts mow the cemetery's grass, asking nothing in return. On those rare times when a deceased's, say, great-great-great-great grandniece from Ohio stops by on a genealogy mission, Haskett takes down her name and contact information in case another long-lost relative stops by.

Once, Haskett shooed from the cemetery a couple coupling behind some bushes ("We're having lunch!" they shouted, but Haskett has ears).

Thousands of small cemeteries like the Brady dot Indiana, often the last remnants of a family farm long ago sold off and subdivided.

Some have suffered from neglect or worse, but in other cases, concerned neighbors feel an obligation to them and act as stewards.

In his Washington Township home, John "Pete" Peterson keeps a supply of American flags and always has a fresh one to plant at the grave of the Civil War soldier (James Bradley, Co. F Eighth Indiana Cavalry) laid low in the Newby Cemetery a few feet from Peterson's basketball hoop.

Vandal watch

Vandals have plagued small, unguarded cemeteries for decades, which is why Peterson, a stockbroker who has lived next door to the Newby with his wife and sons for 13 years, makes it a point to stay home Halloween night and keep his eyes open. "I don't want some knuckleheads coming over there and knocking stuff over," Peterson said.

Sam Sutphin's property outside Zionsville borders a pioneer cemetery that a decade ago was disappearing, its headstones broken off and being swallowed up by the earth. Among the dead: John Harmon and Harmon's Native American wife, Philadelphia. The Harmons lived on the banks of Eagle Creek before Indiana was a state. Their graves "were some of the last pieces of history left around here," said Sutphin, "and I was charmed by that."

The charm was lost on his neighbors, however, and on his township trustee. Sutphin, a venture capitalist, went it alone. He paid for the cemetery's restoration out of his own pocket, some $2,000. "I can't remember that guy's name who I found to do the work," Sutphin said, "but he was an expert. He looked like a bouncer at a biker bar -- big beard, super grungy."

Pioneer cemeteries are by law the responsibility of township trustees, who care for them to varying degrees. Some cut the grass a few times each summer and leave it at that.